Nvidia GeForce GTX 980 4GB “Maxwell” (28nm) Review

Compute Performance

ComputeMark (DX11 Compute)

ComputeMark is first 100% DirectX 11 Compute Shader benchmark and ultimate GPU burner. From ComputeMark.com.

Computemark measures DirectX 11 compute performance and it reveals the GTX 780 Ti is actually superior.

Luxmark (OpenCL Compute)

LuxMark is a OpenCL benchmark tool. The idea for the program was conceived in 2009 by Jean-Francois ‘Jromang’ Romang. The idea was quite simple, wrap SLG inside an easy to use graphical user interface and use it as a benchmark for OpenCL. From LuxRender.net.

OpenCL is an area where Nvidia always struggled versus AMD: for any given performance segment AMD’s card is always a lot faster. With Maxwell this is still the case as the GTX 980 takes a much higher performance segment than the R9 290X yet performs roughly the same. Of course, given the GTX 980 and GTX 780 Ti are neck and neck on performance terms in games it is a huge surprise to see the GTX 980 adds a significant serving of extra OpenCL compute capability. No wonder Nvidia’s GTX 750 Ti had a little stint as an esteemed Cryptocurrency Mining GPU before ASICs crashed the party: Maxwell is compute competent.